Catherine De Medici

XV

COMPENSATION

A few days after the reception of Calvin’s emissaries by the queen, that is to say, toward the close of the year (for the year then began at Easter and the present calendar was not adopted until later in the reign of Charles IX.), Christophe reclined in an easy chair beside the fire in the large brown hall, dedicated to family life, that overlooked the river in his father’s house, where the present drama was begun.  His feet rested on a stool; his mother and Babette Lallier had just renewed the compresses, saturated with a solution brought by Ambroise Pare, who was charged by Catherine de’ Medici to take care of the young man.  Once restored to his family, Christophe became the object of the most devoted care.  Babette, authorized by her father, came very morning and only left the Lecamus household at night.  Christophe, the admiration of the apprentices, gave rise throughout the quarter to various tales, which invested him with mysterious poesy.  He had borne the worst torture; the celebrated Ambroise Pare was employing all his skill to cure him.  What great deed had he done to be thus treated?  Neither Christophe nor his father said a word on the subject.  Catherine, then all-powerful, was concerned in their silence as well as the Prince de Conde.  The constant visits of Pare, now chief surgeon of both the king and the house of Guise, whom the queen-mother and the Lorrains allowed to treat a youth accused of heresy, strangely complicated an affair through which no one saw clearly.  Moreover, the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs came several times to visit the son of his church-warden, and these visits made the causes of Christophe’s present condition still more unintelligible to his neighbors.

The old syndic, who had his plan, gave evasive answers to his brother-furriers, the merchants of the neighborhood, and to all friends who spoke to him of his son:  “Yes, I am very thankful to have saved him.”  —­“Well, you know, it won’t do to put your finger between the bark and the tree.”—­“My son touched fire and came near burning up my house.”  —­“They took advantage of his youth; we burghers get nothing but shame and evil by frequenting the grandees.”—­“This affair decides me to make a lawyer of Christophe; the practice of law will teach him to weigh his words and his acts.”—­“The young queen, who is now in Scotland, had a great deal to do with it; but then, to be sure, my son may have been imprudent.”—­“I have had cruel anxieties.”—­“All this may decide me to give up my business; I do not wish ever to go to court again.”—­“My son has had enough of the Reformation; it has cracked all his joints.  If it had not been for Ambroise, I don’t know what would have become of me.”

Thanks to these ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the old syndic should wish to get his son appointed to the Parliament, and the rector’s visits no longer seemed extraordinary.  As the neighbors reflected on the old man’s anxieties they no longer thought, as they would otherwise have done, that his ambition was inordinate.  The young lawyer, who had lain helpless for months on the bed which his family made up for him in the old hall, was now, for the last week, able to rise and move about by the aid of crutches.  Babette’s love and his mother’s tenderness had deeply touched his heart; and they, while they had him helpless in their hands, lectured him severely on religion.  President de Thou paid his godson a visit during which he showed himself most fatherly.  Christophe, being now a solicitor of the Parliament, must of course, he said, be Catholic; his oath would bind him to that; and the president, who assumed not to doubt of his godson’s orthodoxy, ended his remarks by saying with great earnestness: 

“My son, you have been cruelly tried.  I am myself ignorant of the reasons which made the Messieurs de Guise treat you thus; but I advise you in future to live peacefully, without entering into the troubles of the times; for the favor of the king and queen will not be shown to the makers of revolt.  You are not important enough to play fast and loose with the king as the Guises do.  If you wish to be some day counsellor to the Parliament remember that you cannot obtain that noble office unless by a real and serious attachment to the royal cause.”

Nevertheless, neither President de Thou’s visit, nor the seductions of Babette, nor the urgency of his mother, were sufficient to shake the constancy of the martyr of the Reformation.  Christophe held to his religion all the more because he had suffered for it.

“My father will never let me marry a heretic,” whispered Babette in his ear.

Christophe answered only by tears, which made the young girl silent and thoughtful.

Old Lecamus maintained his paternal and magisterial dignity; he observed his son and said little.  The stern old man, after recovering his dear Christophe, was dissatisfied with himself; he repented the tenderness he had shown for this only son; but he admired him secretly.  At no period of his life did the syndic pull more wires to reach his ends, for he saw the field ripe for the harvest so painfully sown, and he wanted to gather the whole of it.  Some days before the morning of which we write, he had had, being alone with Christophe, a long conversation with him in which he endeavored to discover the secret reason of the young man’s resistance.  Christophe, who was not without ambition, betrayed his faith in the Prince de Conde.  The generous promise of the prince, who, of course, was only exercising his profession of prince, remained graven on his heart; little did he think that Conde had sent him, mentally, to the devil in Orleans, muttering, “A Gascon would have understood me better,” when Christophe called out a touching farewell as the prince passed the window of his dungeon.

But besides this sentiment of admiration for the prince, Christophe had also conceived a profound reverence for the great queen, who had explained to him by a single look the necessity which compelled her to sacrifice him; and who during his agony had given him an illimitable promise in a single tear.  During the silent months of his weakness, as he lay there waiting for recovery, he thought over each event at Blois and at Orleans.  He weighed, one might almost say in spite of himself, the relative worth of these two protections.  He floated between the queen and the prince.  He had certainly served Catherine more than he had served the Reformation, and in a young man both heart and mind would naturally incline toward the queen; less because she was a queen than because she was a woman.  Under such circumstances a man will always hope more from a woman than from a man.

“I sacrificed myself for her; what will she do for me?”

This question Christophe put to himself almost involuntarily as he remembered the tone in which she had said the words, Povero mio!  It is difficult to believe how egotistical a man can become when he lies on a bed of sickness.  Everything, even the exclusive devotion of which he is the object, drives him to think only of himself.  By exaggerating in his own mind the obligation which the Prince de Conde was under to him he had come to expect that some office would be given to him at the court of Navarre.  Still new to the world of political life, he forgot its contending interests and the rapid march of events which control and force the hand of all leaders of parties; he forgot it the more because he was practically a prisoner in solitary confinement on his bed in that old brown room.  Each party is, necessarily, ungrateful while the struggle lasts; when it triumphs it has too many persons to reward not to be ungrateful still.  Soldiers submit to this ingratitude; but their leaders turn against the new master at whose side they have acted and suffered like equals for so long.  Christophe, who alone remembered his sufferings, felt himself already among the leaders of the Reformation by the fact of his martyrdom.  His father, that old fox of commerce, so shrewd, so perspicacious, ended by divining the secret thought of his son; consequently, all his manoeuvres were now based on the natural expectancy to which Christophe had yielded himself.

“Wouldn’t it be a fine thing,” he had said to Babette, in presence of the family a few days before his interview with his son, “to be the wife of a counsellor of the Parliament?  You would be called madame!”

“You are crazy, compere,” said Lallier.  “Where would you get ten thousand crowns’ income from landed property, which a counsellor must have, according to law; and from whom could you buy the office?  No one but the queen-mother and regent could help your son into Parliament, and I’m afraid he’s too tainted with the new opinions for that.”

“What would you pay to see your daughter the wife of a counsellor?”

“Ah! you want to look into my purse, shrewd-head!” said Lallier.

Counsellor to the Parliament!  The words worked powerfully in Christophe’s brain.

Sometime after this conversation, one morning when Christophe was gazing at the river and thinking of the scene which began this history, of the Prince de Conde, Chaudieu, La Renaudie, of his journey to Blois,—­in short, the whole story of his hopes,—­his father came and sat down beside him, scarcely concealing a joyful thought beneath a serious manner.

“My son,” he said, “after what passed between you and the leaders of the Tumult of Amboise, they owe you enough to make the care of your future incumbent on the house of Navarre.”

“Yes,” replied Christophe.

“Well,” continued his father, “I have asked their permission to buy a legal practice for you in the province of Bearn.  Our good friend Pare undertook to present the letters which I wrote on your behalf to the Prince de Conde and the queen of Navarre.  Here, read the answer of Monsieur de Pibrac, vice-chancellor of Navarre:—­

  To the Sieur Lecamus, syndic of the guild of furriers: 

Monseigneur le Prince de Conde desires me to express his regret that he cannot do what you ask for his late companion in the tower of Saint-Aignan, whom he perfectly remembers, and to whom, meanwhile, he offers the place of gendarme in his company; which will put your son in the way of making his mark as a man of courage, which he is.

  The queen of Navarre awaits an opportunity to reward the Sieur
  Christophe, and will not fail to take advantage of it.

  Upon which, Monsieur le syndic, we pray God to have you in His
  keeping.

Pibrac,

At Nerac. 
Chancellor of Navarre.

“Nerac, Pibrac, crack!” cried Babette.  “There’s no confidence to be placed in Gascons; they think only of themselves.”

Old Lecamus looked at his son, smiling scornfully.

“They propose to put on horseback a poor boy whose knees and ankles were shattered for their sakes!” cried the mother.  “What a wicked jest!”

“I shall never see you a counsellor of Navarre,” said his father.

“I wish I knew what Queen Catherine would do for me, if I made a claim upon her,” said Christophe, cast down by the prince’s answer.

“She made you no promise,” said the old man, “but I am certain that she will never mock you like these others; she will remember your sufferings.  Still, how can the queen make a counsellor of the Parliament out of a protestant burgher?”

“But Christophe has not abjured!” cried Babette.  “He can very well keep his private opinions secret.”

“The Prince de Conde would be less disdainful of a counsellor of the Parliament,” said Lallier.

“Well, what say you, Christophe?” urged Babette.

“You are counting without the queen,” replied the young lawyer.

A few days after this rather bitter disillusion, an apprentice brought Christophe the following laconic little missive:—­

  Chaudieu wishes to see his son.

“Let him come in!” cried Christophe.

“Oh! my sacred martyr!” said the minister, embracing him; “have you recovered from your sufferings?”

“Yes, thanks to Pare.”

“Thanks rather to God, who gave you the strength to endure the torture.  But what is this I hear?  Have you allowed them to make you a solicitor?  Have you taken the oath of fidelity?  Surely you will not recognize that prostitute, the Roman, Catholic, and apostolic Church?”

“My father wished it.”

“But ought we not to leave fathers and mothers and wives and children, all, all, for the sacred cause of Calvinism; nay, must we not suffer all things?  Ah!  Christophe, Calvin, the great Calvin, the whole party, the whole world, the Future counts upon your courage and the grandeur of your soul.  We want your life.”

It is a remarkable fact in the mind of man that the most devoted spirits, even while devoting themselves, build romantic hopes upon their perilous enterprises.  When the prince, the soldier, and the minister had asked Christophe, under the bridge, to convey to Catherine the treaty which, if discovered, would in all probability cost him his life, the lad had relied on his nerve, upon chance, upon the powers of his mind, and confident in such hopes he bravely, nay, audaciously put himself between those terrible adversaries, the Guises and Catherine.  During the torture he still kept saying to himself:  “I shall come out of it! it is only pain!” But when this second and brutal demand, “Die, we want your life,” was made upon a boy who was still almost helpless, scarcely recovered from his late torture, and clinging all the more to life because he had just seen death so near, it was impossible for him to launch into further illusions.

Christophe answered quietly:—­

“What is it now?”

“To fire a pistol courageously, as Stuart did on Minard.”

“On whom?”

“The Duc de Guise.”

“A murder?”

“A vengeance.  Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen massacred on the scaffold at Amboise?  A child who saw that butchery, the little d’Aubigne cried out, ‘They have slaughtered France!’”

“You should receive the blows of others and give none; that is the religion of the gospel,” said Christophe.  “If you imitate the Catholics in their cruelty, of what good is it to reform the Church?”

“Oh!  Christophe, they have made you a lawyer, and now you argue!” said Chaudieu.

“No, my friend,” replied the young man, “but parties are ungrateful; and you will be, both you and yours, nothing more than puppets of the Bourbons.”

“Christophe, if you could hear Calvin, you would know how we wear them like gloves!  The Bourbons are the gloves, we are the hand.”

“Read that,” said Christophe, giving Chaudieu Pibrac’s letter containing the answer of the Prince de Conde.

“Oh! my son; you are ambitious, you can no longer make the sacrifice of yourself!—­I pity you!”

With those fine words Chaudieu turned and left him.

Some days after that scene, the Lallier family and the Lecamus family were gathered together in honor of the formal betrothal of Christophe and Babette, in the old brown hall, from which Christophe’s bed had been removed; for he was now able to drag himself about and even mount the stairs without his crutches.  It was nine o’clock in the evening and the company were awaiting Ambroise Pare.  The family notary sat before a table on which lay various contracts.  The furrier was selling his house and business to his head-clerk, who was to pay down forty thousand francs for the house and then mortgage it as security for the payment of the goods, for which, however, he paid twenty thousand francs on account.

Lecamus was also buying for his son a magnificent stone house, built by Philibert de l’Orme in the rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, which he gave to Christophe as a marriage portion.  He also took two hundred thousand francs from his own fortune, and Lallier gave as much more, for the purchase of a fine seignorial manor in Picardy, the price of which was five hundred thousand francs.  As this manor was a tenure from the Crown it was necessary to obtain letters-patent (called rescriptions) granted by the king, and also to make payment to the Crown of considerable feudal dues.  The marriage had been postponed until this royal favor was obtained.  Though the burghers of Paris had lately acquired the right to purchase manors, the wisdom of the privy council had been exercised in putting certain restrictions on the sale of those estates which were dependencies of the Crown; and the one which old Lecamus had had in his eye for the last dozen years was among them.  Ambroise was pledged to bring the royal ordinance that evening; and the old furrier went and came from the hall to the door in a state of impatience which showed how great his long-repressed ambition had been.  Ambroise at last appeared.

“My old friend!” cried the surgeon, in an agitated manner, with a glance at the supper table, “let me see your linen.  Good.  Oh! you must have wax candles.  Quick, quick! get out your best things!”

“Why? what is it all about?” asked the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs.

“The queen-mother and the young king are coming to sup with you,” replied the surgeon.  “They are only waiting for an old counsellor who agreed to sell his place to Christophe, and with whom Monsieur de Thou has concluded a bargain.  Don’t appear to know anything; I have escaped from the Louvre to warn you.”

In a second the whole family were astir; Christophe’s mother and Babette’s aunt bustled about with the celerity of housekeepers suddenly surprised.  But in spite of the apparent confusion into which the news had thrown the entire family, the precautions were promptly made, with an activity that was nothing short of marvellous.  Christophe, amazed and confounded by such a favor, was speechless, gazing mechanically at what went on.

“The queen and king here in our house!” said the old mother.

“The queen!” repeated Babette.  “What must we say and do?”

In less than an hour all was changed; the hall was decorated; the supper-table sparkled.  Presently the noise of horses sounded in the street.  The light of torches carried by the horsemen of the escort brought all the burghers of the neighborhood to their windows.  The noise soon subsided and the escort rode away, leaving the queen-mother and her son, King Charles IX., Charles de Gondi, now Grand-master of the wardrobe and governor of the king, Monsieur de Thou, Pinard, secretary of State, the old counsellor, and two pages, under the arcade before the door.

“My worthy people,” said the queen as she entered, “the king, my son, and I have come to sign the marriage-contract of the son of my furrier,—­but only on condition that he remains a Catholic.  A man must be a Catholic to enter Parliament; he must be a Catholic to own land which derives from the Crown; he must be a Catholic if he would sit at the king’s table.  That is so, is it not, Pinard?”

The secretary of State entered and showed the letters-patent.

“If we are not all Catholics,” said the little king, “Pinard will throw those papers into the fire.  But we are all Catholics here, I think,” he continued, casting his somewhat haughty eyes over the company.

“Yes, sire,” replied Christophe, bending his injured knees with difficulty, and kissing the hand which the king held out to him.

Queen Catherine stretched out her hand to Christophe and, raising him hastily, drew him aside into a corner, saying in a low voice:—­

“Ah ca! my lad, no evasions here.  Are you playing above-board now?”

“Yes, madame,” he answered, won by the dazzling reward and the honor done him by the grateful queen.

“Very good.  Monsieur Lecamus, the king, my son, and I permit you to purchase the office of the goodman Groslay, counsellor of the Parliament, here present.  Young man, you will follow, I hope, in the steps of your predecessor.”

De Thou advanced and said:  “I will answer for him, madame.”

“Very well; draw up the deed, notary,” said Pinard.

“Inasmuch as the king our master does us the favor to sign my daughter’s marriage contract,” cried Lallier, “I will pay the whole price of the manor.”

“The ladies may sit down,” said the young king, graciously:  “As a wedding present to the bride I remit, with my mother’s consent, all my dues and rights in the manor.”

Old Lecamus and Lallier fell on their knees and kissed the king’s hand.

“Mordieu! sire, what quantities of money these burghers have!” whispered de Gondi in his ear.

The young king laughed.

“As their Highnesses are so kind,” said old Lecamus, “will they permit me to present to them my successor, and ask them to continue to him the royal patent of furrier to their Majesties?”

“Let us see him,” said the king.

Lecamus led forward his successor, who was livid with fear.

“If my mother consents, we will now sit down to table,” said the little king.

Old Lecamus had bethought himself of presenting to the king a silver goblet which he had bought of Benvenuto Cellini when the latter stayed in Paris at the hotel de Nesle.  This treasure of art had cost the furrier no less than two thousand crowns.

“Oh! my dear mother, see this beautiful work!” cried the young king, lifting the goblet by its stem.

“It was made in Florence,” replied Catherine.

“Pardon me, madame,” said Lecamus, “it was made in Paris by a Florentine.  All that is made in Florence would belong to your Majesty; that which is made in France is the king’s.”

“I accept it, my good man,” cried Charles IX.; “and it shall henceforth be my particular drinking cup.”

“It is beautiful enough,” said the queen, examining the masterpiece, “to be included among the crown-jewels.  Well, Maitre Ambroise,” she whispered in the surgeon’s ear, with a glance at Christophe, “have you taken good care of him?  Will he walk again?”

“He will run,” replied the surgeon, smiling.  “Ah! you have cleverly made him a renegade.”

“Ha!” said the queen, with the levity for which she has been blamed, though it was only on the surface, “the Church won’t stand still for want of one monk!”

The supper was gay; the queen thought Babette pretty, and, in the regal manner which was natural to her, she slipped upon the girl’s finger a diamond ring which compensated in value for the goblet bestowed upon the king.  Charles IX., who afterwards became rather too fond of these invasions of burgher homes, supped with a good appetite.  Then, at a word from his new governor (who, it is said, was instructed to make him forget the virtuous teachings of Cypierre), he obliged all the men present to drink so deeply that the queen, observing that the gaiety was about to become too noisy, rose to leave the room.  As she rose, Christophe, his father, and the two women took torches and accompanied her to the shop-door.  There Christophe ventured to touch the queen’s wide sleeve and to make her a sign that he had something to say.  Catherine stopped, made a gesture to the father and the two women to leave her, and said, turning to Christophe: 

“What is it?”

“It may serve you to know, madame,” replied Christophe, whispering in her ear, “that the Duc de Guise is being followed by assassins.”

“You are a loyal subject,” said Catherine, smiling, “and I shall never forget you.”

She held out to him her hand, so celebrated for its beauty, first ungloving it, which was indeed a mark of favor,—­so much so that Christophe, then and there, became altogether royalist as he kissed that adorable hand.

“So they mean to rid me of that bully without my having a finger in it,” thought she as she replaced her glove.

Then she mounted her mule and returned to the Louvre, attended by her two pages.

Christophe went back to the supper-table, but was thoughtful and gloomy even while he drank; the fine, austere face of Ambroise Pare seemed to reproach him for his apostasy.  But subsequent events justified the manoeuvres of the old syndic.  Christophe would certainly not have escaped the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew; his wealth and his landed estates would have made him a mark for the murderers.  History has recorded the cruel fate of the wife of Lallier’s successor, a beautiful woman, whose naked body hung by the hair for three days from one of the buttresses of the Pont au Change.  Babette trembled as she thought that she, too, might have endured the same treatment if Christophe had continued a Calvinist,—­for such became the name of the Reformers.  Calvin’s personal ambition was thus gratified, though not until after his death.

Such was the origin of the celebrated parliamentary house of Lecamus.  Tallemant des Reaux is in error when he states that they came originally from Picardy.  It is only true that the Lecamus family found it for their interest in after days to date from the time the old furrier bought their principal estate, which, as we have said, was situated in Picardy.  Christophe’s son, who succeeded him under Louis XIII., was the father of the rich president Lecamus who built, in the reign of Louis XIV., that magnificent mansion which shares with the hotel Lambert the admiration of Parisians and foreigners, and was assuredly one of the finest buildings in Paris.  It may still be seen in the rue Thorigny, though at the beginning of the Revolution it was pillaged as having belonged to Monsieur de Juigne, the archbishop of Paris.  All the decorations were then destroyed; and the tenants who lodge there have greatly damaged it; nevertheless this palace, which is reached through the old house in the rue de la Pelleterie, still shows the noble results obtained in former days by the spirit of family.  It may be doubted whether modern individualism, brought about by the equal division of inheritances, will ever raise such noble buildings.